References

(Note to self: Write a post apologizing for the long sabbatical, later.)

I just watched Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, a movie I was waiting to watch ever since it’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Regular readers of this blog, and those who know me personally (strangely, both groups know me in equal measures) know that I am a cinephile who worships WKW. But this post is not about My Blueberry Nights or Wong Kar Wai.

There is a scene in My Blueberry Nights, when the protagonist - Elizabeth, played by Norah Jones watches a security camera tape of her boyfriend having dinner with another girl in a cafe. There is a slow tracking shot after, as Jeremy played by Jude Law, holds her close to him as she cries. The score in the background is a bluegrass version of Yumeji’s Theme from WKW’s In The Mood For Love.

And this one piece of music references a similar scene in that movie (actually, a collection of scenes that develops a core theme), giving this scene a strange depth. I realized that a person who has not watched In The Mood For Love will never really understand what it all means. This is obviously a calculated reference, that evokes an emotional response to an emotional response to something else experienced earlier.

But I want to write about the effects that a few such subtle references had on me. I watched Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, a movie about a man trapped in his paralyzed body, who relies on his imagination and his memories to live a fulfilling life entirely in his mind. In many ways, the film mirrored periods of my life, when I would turn to day-dreaming and other escapist fantasies to ignore certain painful events. There is a scene in the film when the protagonist remembers the first day driving his new car through the streets of Paris. The background score in that scene is the same music played in the opening of Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, a film which in many ways narrates my childhood. I was overcome by the sheer beauty of that scene, the music, and the references it made. And soon, I cried - really opening the floodgates.

Strangely, I had heard the same piece of music when I re-watched Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers a week before that. Though I didn’t react in a similar way, the coincidence is uncanny - three movies evoking strange emotional responses by way of referencing films that are very very close to my heart.

The reason for that is quite evident - I watch way too many films. But, jokes apart, I feel good that I am able to experience such things, that many won’t be able to. If nothing else, it inspired me to write a again.